


Hope Is

by Masu_Trout



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Homura is Awesome, Magical Girls, Not Rebellion Story Compliant, One-Sided Akemi Homura/Kaname Madoka, POV First Person, POV Outsider, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 11:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3809419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mitakihara City is the perfect city for a magical girl. </p>
<p>In fact, it's almost <i>too</i> perfect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope Is

Even on my first month in Mitakihara City I could tell something was wrong. The other girls never noticed it, of course; they'd never even been outside the city. Me, though, I've been in hunts all over Japan. Five years is a long time to be a magical girl, and I'd still never seen anything like this before.

There were no demons.

Well, no, that wasn't it. Not quite. There were enough demons to keep this place's little troop of girls well-stocked, six of them plus me, and to build up a little bit of a surplus for the times when we couldn't go on a hunt. We went out every three nights or so, cleared out all the new demons who'd decided to show their ugly faces, and were back in time to grab a few hours of sleep.

It was _weird_. Strangest thing I'd ever seen really, like... well, like an alien appearing to you one day and offering to make your wildest dreams come true. And if there was anything I'd learned from _that_ particular situation, it was this: some things are just too good to be true.

Every other city I'd ever stayed in, north or south, coast or inland, it was one of two things: too much or too little. Up in Sapporo, where I'd first started off, it was like a modern-day famine, right in the middle of Japan. (I don't know why Kyubey decided to contract so many of us, and to be honest I don't care. The less I try to understand that freak, the better.) Three magical girls to every demon appearing, if not more, and every girl for herself. I I never worried about demons killing people, because one of them couldn't spawn without four or five girls on top of it immediately. You were more likely to be killed by an 'ally' than a demon- I'd lost a couple of friends that way, before I decided I had to get out of there. I still wake up shaking, sometimes, remembering what it looks like when an eight-year-old girl burns to death.

Um. Anyway.

After a few months of that, I left a goodbye note for my parents on the kitchen counter and headed south. I'd heard from an upperclassman who heard it from a girl who heard it from a girl who I'm pretty sure got bisected by an axe that Kawasaki had an insane amount of demons, enough that you could hunt to your heart's content. It turned out to be true. 

I wish it hadn't.

Kawasaki had almost no magical girls, and more demons than I'd ever seen before in my life. Everyone there fought in teams; if you didn't the demons could quite literally swarm you to death. There were no fights over territory or grief cube distribution, because all of us were far too preoccupied with trying not to die. Three days in, I saw a demon actually kill a person for the first time. By the time I'd left there, I'd seen it happen six times more.

Since then, I'd been bouncing back and forth between cities, going from flood to famine and back again, my supply of grief cubes changing with each new home.

Until Mitakihara. 

Mitakihara, where, according to to Aoko, a little ten-year-old girl who'd been fighting here since she was eight, there were always just enough demons to go around. There'd been fewer demons back when was only three of them on patrol, and when they (briefly, of course; I'm sixteen and I'm already old for a magical girl) got ten people in their squad, the number of demons went up accordingly.

She didn't think there was anything strange about it, either. None of them did. Like it was perfectly normal for the demon population to scale perfectly to the number of girls available to fight them. Sometimes I wanted to bang all their heads against walls, just to see if it would get some brain cells running up there.

Not that they were stupid. They weren't. They knew tactics and strategy better than any group I'd worked with before (the benefits of living long enough to figure out what worked, I guess) and they all seemed perfectly bright when it came to things like schoolwork.

Naive is the best word for it, probably. I mean, don't get me wrong; they were warriors. They'd seen death before. But there's a certain look you get in your eye when you're considering caving your best friend's skull in because she has the last grief cube, or when you leave someone you could've become friends with to be torn apart by demons because if you try to go back and save her all you'll do is die yourself. Things like that stick in your soul, and if there's a way to get them out I haven't found it yet.

These girls didn't have that. They were the first magical girls more than two weeks contracted I'd ever seen who didn't have that.

I suppose that's why I went along with it. I could have pressed the issue, told them about Yuu or Ayame or Nagisa, but I didn't really want to. Even if it meant figuring out this mystery, I didn't want them to have to hear those stories. (And I think that, just a little bit, I didn't want them to know what roles _I_ played in those stories. I'd given up on the idea of honor pretty quick after becoming a magical girl, but when I looked at them I couldn't help but be a little ashamed over the things I'd done.)

I did ask Kyubey once, after another night of demon hunting that went far too perfectly. I hadn't really hoped to get anything out of the sneaky bastard, no matter how tightly he clung to his 'no lying' schtick, but he did say something.

_I'm afraid I can't say anything on the subject of demon numbers in this area! She's wouldn't like such a thing, and anger makes her cruel._

Which was about the level I expected from the rat. Still, though, it did give me something: there was a reason for Mitakihara's weirdness, and that reason was related to a 'she' somehow. Who was she, though? A magical girl? A human? Another incubator? (God, I hoped not.) It was something, but not enough to go on. Not by a long shot.

So I bode my time. Went a little further on patrols, stayed out a little longer, watched the rooftops a little more carefully than the rest of them, but other than that I kept my head down. In hindsight, I probably would have kept at it that way forever, if chance hadn't decided to intervene one summer night.

(Real chance, not 'always the exact amount of demons we need to survive' chance.)

At this point, home was a next of blankets and some cheap appliances hooked up to an abandoned apartment on the top floor of one of Mitakihara's more run-down complexes. I knew a couple of the girls disapproved of my living space – Yuiko because it was illegal and Makoto because I could have stolen myself a much swankier apartment if I wanted – but I didn't much care. It wasn't much, but it was far enough from the other girls' houses that I could have some privacy when I wanted it.

I suddenly found myself a lot less fond of the whole privacy thing when a herd of demons spawned as I was heading home.

"Shit!" I'd snarled, feeling the miasma gather and _pulse_ like a migraine driving into my skull. I could tell it was huge just from the feel of it; maybe nine, ten demons? Nothing we couldn't have handled as team, but on my own...

_Ran! Suzume! Aoko! Someone, get over here!_

No answer. They'd all be long out of range by now, safe and warm at home. And I couldn't go get them now, not without leaving people to be killed- these demons would spawn any minute, and it would take me at least half an hour to round everyone up and bring them back here, even with a magical girl's enhanced speed. By then, this pack would be well-fed and in some other part of the city entirely, ready to dine on more innocent people.

Unless there was something to distract them from their prey.

"Shit," I said again.

_What are you going to do?_ Kyubey asked. I jumped – I'd almost forgotten he was there.

I thought about Aoko, the way she called me a hero after I'd saved her from a demon. Suzume's smile. The way Makoto bit her lip when she was worried or sad. Everything those six had done for me, despite the fact I was an outsider they had no obligation to help. What they'd think about me if they'd realized I was too much of a coward to try and save the people here from the most horrifying death imaginable.

"Go round up the rest of the squad and bring them back here," I told Kyubey wearily. "As fast as you can."

_I wouldn't advise such a foolish course of action, Yori,_ Kyubey said. _The death of a veteran magical girl is a much greater loss than that of civilians, no matter the numbers._

"I am not sitting here and listening to you babble on about the greater good. Just do it!"

He sighed. _Of course, Yori._ Finally, he scampered off, heading in the direction of Hana's apartment. 

_Well_ , I thought, _at least I'll never have to listen to him again._

\--- 

Two minutes later, I flipped onto a rooftop above the miasma, dress flowing in the slight breeze and harpoon grasped firmly in my hand. They hadn't been hard to find – all I had to was follow the sense of growing despair and desire to claw my own eyes out.

Say what you will about demons, they make an entrance.

I swore for the third time that night when I saw what was down below. They'd formed in an abandoned construction site – six already, vicious-looking creatures with spindly arms and bulbous heads. There was probably a few more to come, too.

What was worse, though, was what was in the center of them.

A woman, probably about forty or forty-five with a red ribbon tied around her silver-streaked dark hair stood on a concrete block in the center of the storm. She wasn't reacting in any way despite the crowd of demons encircling her, which meant she'd already been enchanted by them.

Suzume and Ran were experts at civilian retrieval, and could pull people out of the way of demon attacks better than any other magical girls I'd ever met. I was terrible at it. Neither my harpoon nor my special abilities were designed to give me the kind of cover I'd need to save her. There'd be at least two casualties tonight, then. 

"Oh well," I sighed, past terror and into casual apathy by now, and leapt down.

And that was when the woman started glowing.

She burst into color, a radiant lavender star enveloping her body, glowing so bright I could barely see her. The demons reacted to it violently, shrieking and covering their faces with clawed hands as the light washed over the whole construction site. It burnt itself out as quickly as it had formed, and there was a magical girl standing in front of me.

"What..?"

She was dressed in lavenders and whites, a long, gorgeous, full-length outfit that was somewhere between a ball gown and a wedding dress. It made my own getup look like a little girl playing dress-up. A purple diamond glittered on one hand, and she held a bow strung with light. 

I got my wits back about me as fast as I could. Why would Kyubey turn a middle-aged woman into a magical girl? Had he contracted some random civilian to try and buy me more time? Whatever it was, she'd need my help; I'd known a few girls contracted in their early twenties before, and they always were laughably weak. I couldn't even imagine how hopelessly outclassed a magical girl (magical woman?) old enough to be my _mother_ would be.

She notched her bow with an arrow of pure light, pointing it at the nearest demon. It hissed, rushing towards her, but I held back. She didn't seem to realize I was here yet, and if I surprised her now she might send that arrow at _me_. Better to wait until she'd let the first one go.

She released it at the demon's face just as I broke into a run, closing the distance between myself and to prepare for a melee strike. A melee strike that hit only air, as it turned out, since the woman's arrow went _through_ the demon's head, leaving it screaming and clutching at where its eye once had been as it burst in an explosion of light. I shut my eyes against the glow, and by the time I'd opened them all that was left of the demon was a few disintegrating strips of flesh and a newly-formed grief cube.

_"What!?"_

The woman glanced at me as she readied another arrow. I immediately flinched. It was... I don't know how to describe it. It was the difference between myself and the other girls, in the things we'd seen and things we'd done, only multiplied by a thousand. In her eyes, I got the feeling of despair upon despair, layers of regrets and losses and deaths and sins all hastily plastered over with a thin paper mask. 

For the first time in five years, I felt like a child.

"Who _are_ you?" 

The woman paused to fire off another arrow, and then another and another almost faster than I could track. I shut my eyes reflexively, but this time they didn't explode, just pincushioned a demon in every joint it had until it fell to its knees and began to disintegrate.

"Kyubey didn't tell you about me?" she asked calmly. She had a soft voice, emotionless and still. It fit her.

"I-I asked, but he said he shouldn't tell. That you'd be mad." I had no doubts as to the identity of the 'she' he'd mentioned.

"He was right." Another flurry of arrows fired; another demon down. "You asked, though?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, how did you know to ask?"

A demon charged, snarling at us. I raised my harpoon for an attack, only to lower it when five arrows suddenly buried themselves in its face and torso.

"Oh! Right. It's just... _too_ perfect here, you know? There's always enough grief cubes to go around that no one has to fight for them, but never so many that we get overwhelmed and picked off. It's like nowhere else."

The woman huffed softly as another demon spawned from the miasma, then shot two holes in it before it could even form properly.

"It was clever of you to realize."

"Heh." I could help blushing a little – it wasn't every day you got complimented by a woman who could one-shot a demon. "Why do you do it, though?" I gestured around me at the four grief cubes scattered around us. "I mean, you can't need _that_ many cubes, right? Or... are there others like you here, collecting cubes?" A whole squad of tanks like her – I couldn't even imagine it.

"Ah." For a long moment she said nothing. "There... used to be. But not anymore. That's why I'm here; your friends shouldn't have to experience what we went through."

"Oh." Suddenly wished I could travel through time, just to stick my foot in my past-self's mouth. Great job bringing up grief-inducing topics in the middle of battle! "Um. I'm sorry to hear that. And, uh... thank you."

She just smiled softly at that, so faint I was half-sure I'd imagined the curve of her mouth.

The remaining demons had apparently pooled their pitiful brainpower together and realized attacking one at a time wasn't doing much good. They'd gathered near the opposite end of the construction site, only to snarl and charge as one. I readied my weapon – surely even this woman couldn't kill four demons at once? – and waited for them to get within range. 

The woman, in contrast, simply lifted her bow and, after concentrating for a moment, fired a single arrow. It split as it left the bow, dividing itself into more and more shafts of light so that by the time the demons realized what was happening they were being pierced by dozens of thin purple streaks. Three of them screamed and fell on the spot. The fourth, shielded partially from the blast by the others' bodies, only snarled louder and, closing the distance with incredible speed, swung a daggerlike fist at the two of us. 

I think I screamed at that point. The woman didn't have enough time to fire off another shot, and there was no way I could hit a target moving that fast.

_Well,_ I thought in the split second before the strike, _We almost had it_.

Before I could even process what was happening, I felt strong arms wrap around me and push me down as white exploded all around me, reaching up into the sky. I heard the demon scream, a sound like the cry of a dying animal mixed with the bone-rattling shriek of tearing metal, and then it was silent except for the woman's heartbeat and my gasping breaths.

The light hadn't faded.

Slowly, I looked up. The woman had grabbed me, covering my body with hers. Her face wasn't far above mine; from here, I could see the thin stress lines and wrinkles carved into her cheeks. And above that...

Above that, the woman had wings. Ones made of pure light, stretching up towards the sky beyond the wingspan of any normal bird. If I looked closely, I could see flickering patterns in their depths, pink and blue and red and gold. 

I didn't say anything this time. I think I'd lost all ability to be shocked.

When she realized I was safe she dropped me, letting me slip shakily to the ground. She picked the closest grief cube off the ground, and casually drained her gem. Once she was finished, she slipped the still-useful cube in her pocket. 

All those attacks, and she hadn't even generated enough despair to fill a whole cube.

I'm not sure it was shock or just relief at being alive, but it wasn't until she was halfway across the site that I realized she was leaving. 

"Wait!" I called desperately.

She stopped and turned to face me. There was a lot I wanted to ask her, from 'How did you do that?' to 'Will you please please please teach me everything you know?' but a question wasn't what came out of my mouth. Instead I shifted uncomfortably, the realization that I _wasn't_ going to die tonight only just starting to filter through the haze of adrenaline and panic and awe, and said, "Thanks. For everything, I mean."

She nodded once, looking a little uncomfortable herself, and once again turned to leave. After a moment, though, she looked back.

"Just," she said, and paused.

I waited.

"Just... there's someone out there who made a wish for you. She... she deserves a lot more thanks than me. So please, make sure to protect yourself and your friends. For her sake."

I had no idea what she was saying, but I nodded vigorously anyway. At that point I think I would have accepted it fully if she'd told me that the sky was green and demons were just tragically misunderstood.

I'd hoped she'd say more, but instead she took two running jumps, flapped her wings, and disappeared over the top of the next building.

Twenty-five minutes later, my six squad members and Kyubey showed up at the construction site, out of breath, panicking, and fully expecting me to be long dead. I think poor Yuiko nearly had a heart attack when she saw me sitting there surrounded by grief cubes.

"Yori!" Ran gasped. "Are you okay?"

"What happened here?" Hana asked, taking in the scattering grief cubes, my shaking but unharmed body, the scorch marks from the woman's thousand-arrow attack fresh against the concrete. Her grip on her hammer flexed, like she wasn't sure whether to relax or panic more.

"I think," I said slowly, looking down at my trembling fingers. "I think I was just saved by an angel."

I never even learned her name.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to find good references for the girls' names, but I'm no expert; if any of them sound completely off, please let me know!


End file.
